


counting cards like blessings

by cheloniidae



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Gen, Vault 21 Culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 11:04:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13270116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheloniidae/pseuds/cheloniidae
Summary: Doc Mitchell has seen Isaac Levitt twice since they left Vault 21. He didn't think the third would be on his operating table.





	counting cards like blessings

Doc Mitchell’s mystery patient is alive, which is more than most men can say after taking two bullets to the head. It was midnight when Victor showed up on his doorstep with what looked like a dirty, dripping bundle of cloth; it’s long past daybreak, getting on to noon, when Mitchell cuts the last bandage. The man’s face is a mess of sutures and swollen tissue under the gauze, but Mitchell can tell him for a stranger. Nobody in town has that color chestnut skin and that kind of corkscrew hair.

Goodsprings is already in trouble from helping one stranger. If this one don’t bring a pack of Powder Gangers or worse down on the town’s head, it’ll be better luck than they’ve had so far.

He sinks into the nearest chair. Age piles up in the Mojave quicker than sand, and it buries folks just as fast. The wave of adrenaline that carried him through the operation is gone. His fingers are paying for hours of extracting bone and bullet fragments, his bum leg ain’t happy about being stood on for so long, and his stomach is reminding him that he hasn’t eaten since yesterday. The ceiling fan spins lazily overhead, circles and circles and circles.

Mitchell stands before sleep can catch him. The hours after an operation are the most critical, and without a monitor to keep an eye on the man’s vital signs, the responsibility falls to him. Rest ain’t in Mitchell’s near future. He changes out of his bloody clothes, sets an egg timer for ten minutes, and throws together something to eat. He’s no use to his patient if he faints from hunger.

The timer dings. Mitchell checks pulse, breathing, blood pressure. They’re all stable. Would be better if he had something to detect brain activity, but that kind of equipment don’t exist out here. Even his surgical lights aren’t really surgical lights; they’re something a prospector rigged together from old parts.

When he’s done, he sets the timer again. He’ll be keeping this up for hours.

The man had a pack on him when Victor brought him in. It’s the only way to find a name and a next-of-kin to contact, but Mitchell still don’t feel quite right rifling through it. Make three hundred people live their whole lives in tight quarters, and they’ll come up with rules to keep from killing each other. Vault 21 had three: don’t cheat, don’t go through other people’s things, and don’t enter somebody’s room without asking. Those little bits of privacy -- the only they ever got -- were sacrosanct.

But Mitchell can’t help noticing things, as much as he tries not to. Whoever shot this John Doe left him his stimpaks and caps and books. If this was a robbery like Victor said, the shooter was after something less ordinary.

Ding. Check. Stable.

More digging through the inner pockets turns up an old photo wrapped in clear plastic. Mitchell recognizes the place before the people: a Vault 21 diner. Every floor’s diner had the same layout, but there were little differences. He could’ve told what floor it was by the tiling, years ago. He can’t anymore. Has to be the first, he reckons, after House flooded everything below it with concrete.

In the foreground, two men stand shoulder to shoulder, arms wrapped around each other. The man on the right is holding a young boy in his free arm. The kid beams at the camera, showing off the gaps in his baby-tooth smile. They’re all wearing vault suits.

A chill runs through Mitchell. These are no tourists playing dress-up. On their own, outside, Mitchell might not recognize them. Together, he recognizes the Levitt-Lucases.

Mitchell tries to put the name Isaac Levitt to the bloodied mess he fixed up last night. It takes a few tries before it sticks. In Mitchell’s memory, Isaac is still the mild-mannered schoolteacher who could outbluff a statue and knew too much about the history of Blackjack. He helped Mitchell pack his medical equipment they day they had to leave. And somebody tied him up, gagged him, shot him twice in the head, and buried him in a shallow grave half a mile from Mitchell’s house. He could’ve died in the graveyard; he could’ve died on the operating table.

Mitchell’s stomach churns. He nearly loses the little food he’s had to eat today.

Not many people from Vault 21 are left in Nevada. Only Sarah and Sheldon stayed in Vegas proper; most of the others wandered west to California. They settled in Arroyo, Shady Sands, Vault City: cities that promised the safety and structure they’d left behind. Half the ones that made it there passed from diseases their bodies never learned how to beat. Half the ones that didn’t make it died that way, too.

Not many people from Vault 21 are left.

If Mitchell has any say in it, they won’t lose another.

  
When a town has just one doctor, people will push each other out of the way for a chance to do him a favor. Half the townsfolk are grateful former patients; the rest know they’ll need his help some day. It pays to be on his good side.

Alice and Lorena Dawsey are the first to show up to help. Word has already gotten out about the commotion in the graveyard, no doubt thanks to Victor. Turns out the men that did it stopped for a few rounds of drinks at the saloon before heading out. Alice passes on Trudy’s description of them, and it matches Victor’s. The only good news is that they weren’t Powder Gangers.

Mitchell has the Dawseys move Isaac from the surgical table to the bed. He can’t do it on his own without breaking something in himself, in Isaac, or both, but they wrangle bighorners for a living. One man ain’t a challenge for them, and Isaac is lighter than he should be. Mitchell is gonna have to figure out how to feed him if he don’t wake up soon.

“Know who he is?” Lorena asks, pensively chewing at her lip. This is a small, quiet town, and they like it that way. A near-murdered stranger is rarely a good omen.

“He won’t be no trouble. I know him.”

“Christ!” says Alice. “Why didn’t you say nothing?”

“A friend of yours is a friend of ours.” Lorena is decisive, a one-woman herd closing ranks.

Friend is the wrong word -- by vault standards, they were never that close; by surface standards, they’re something more intimate than family -- but Mitchell doesn’t correct her. There’s a reason he doesn’t wear his Pip-Boy around. It’s the same reason he took to talking like the townsfolk even though he never said _ain’t_ a day in his life before he was thirty-nine. He’s part of Goodsprings, now; he don’t like reminding folks he was something else before.

News travels faster than bullets, here. The Dawseys get it in their heads to bring a casserole by later, and other well-wishers follow suit. They did the same when his wife got sick. That moment, that feeling of being part of something again, tied him to Goodsprings as much as Vance’s grave. They made him one of theirs.

They’re doing the same for Isaac, now. If those men come back to finish what they started, they’ll have a hell of a fight on their hands.

  
The signs are not promising. Mitchell knows how these things go: the first twenty-four hours are the most critical, and every hour Isaac stays unconscious after that lowers his odds of waking up at all. If a gambler was watching from the outside, they’d be changing their bet right about now.

He trades his own bed for a chair by Isaac’s bedside. Isaac will be disoriented if he wakes up; he’ll need somebody to help him get his bearings, keep him from standing and ripping out his IVs. Or worse, stumbling out of bed, falling, and hitting his head. His brain took two bullets. Doubtful it could take much more punishment.

Most of the day is spent in that same chair, telling Isaac stories. “Hey there, Yitz,” he’ll say. “Remember when--” And then he’ll launch into a story he hasn’t thought about in years. A familiar voice and familiar words are good for a recovering brain. For Isaac’s sake, he tries to remember what he used to sound like, back when he wore a white coat over a vault suit. He smooths out his learned twang as much as he can, but the ain’ts and double-negatives still slip in. He can’t will away four years of habit overnight.

The town don’t stop -- and geckos don’t stop biting -- on account of one man. Mitchell has to start seeing other patients again. He treats them in the clinic as usual, with a screen to shield Isaac from curious eyes. They still ask about him. “Might be a while ‘fore he wakes up,” is all Mitchell can say, and they pat him on the shoulder and promise him their prayers.

They mean well. They do.

Isaac sleeps through the next night. Mitchell stays awake as much as he can, and in the dark, he can’t stop wondering: what in Sam Hill was Isaac doing on the road out here? Last he heard, Isaac was going back to Shady Sands to patch things up with Mike. Hell of a thing, losing a kid, but those two were inseparable since they could walk. The thought of them splitting up just ain’t right.

A lot of things haven’t been right, since their vault opened.

Mitchell has put off writing the letter so far, but he can’t do it much longer. He doesn’t know what he’ll write. Whenever he’s given bad news before, it’s been in person. Never had a paper between him and his patient’s family. He tries writing it in his head, over and over, but how do you tell a man his husband got shot and might not wake up?

Another day passes.

People from Vault 21 never fool themselves about the odds. Mitchell revises his mental letter to probably.

  
On the third morning since the surgery, Mitchell is woken by the sound of shifting sheets. He opens his eyes to find that Isaac’s are open, too. He’s half sitting, trying to prop himself up further with his arm, and he’s looking around the room in dazed confusion.

Mitchell gives silent thanks to anything that might be listening. “Whoa, easy, easy,” he says. “Just stay there, Yitz. You’re all right. You’re all right.”

The nickname soothes Isaac, and he lets himself be lowered back onto the bed. “Do I know you?” he asks. His voice sounds drier than sandpaper; the IV fluids keeps him hydrated, but no water has touched his throat in at least three days.

“I’m Mitchell Weintraub. Remember me?”

“That’s why you never wrote Sarah.” Isaac blinks. Tilts his head to the side. Winces, then winces more when it pulls at the stitches. “I’m thirsty as hell, Mitch.”

Mitchell takes the glass of water he’s been keeping by the bedside, raises Isaac’s head, and puts the glass to his lips. “Take it slow,” he warns. It would be better if he had ice chips, but he’d need a working freezer for that. He takes the glass away after a few sips. Isaac gives him a look of betrayal.

“Being dead hurts more than I thought,” says Isaac. He looks around the room again, calmer. “Where’s Asher?”

And he falls back asleep.

Isaac wakes again a few hours later, and he stays conscious long enough to eat something. Mitchell is concerned that he’ll have to explain who he is again, but it seems Isaac’s memory is fine. What’s less fine is his conviction that they’re both dead. No matter how much Mitchell tells him he’s in Goodsprings, Isaac isn’t having none of it.

“They shot me,” Isaac says reasonably, the way he’d speak to an argumentative student. “There was a grave.”

“Somebody pulled you out, and I patched you up.” It isn’t the first time Mitchell has tried to explain this. Painkillers can make people think odd things, but this is more than odd. Then again, so’s surviving getting shot in the head.

Isaac considers this. “If we were alive, you wouldn’t be talking like a cowboy.”

Mitchell gives in. Ain’t no point in arguing with him when he’s like this. “Just eat up, Yitzie,” he says. Isaac’s motor functions seem to be recovering smoothly, aside from the slight tremor in his hands. He might even be good enough to try walking soon. Some fresh air will do him some good.

There’s a thought Mitchell never would’ve had seven years ago.

An emergency brahmin-kick-related housecall forces Mitchell out of the house for a couple of hours. Most ways of getting hurt in the wasteland don’t have to do with other folks: animals, viruses, bacteria, thirst, hunger. Everywhere Mitchell’s been on the surface, he’s run into troublemakers, but nature’s tougher and it’s been there longer. Don’t need folks killing other folks when the wasteland’s happy to do it for them.

Mitchell comes back to find Isaac lying perfectly still, staring up at the ceiling. His arms are crossed over his chest, right hand holding his left forearm, and they rise and fall with his breathing. Mitchell thinks he’s asleep, until Isaac turns his head to look right at him.

His eyes are focused, lucid. “How long’ve you been up?” Mitchell asks, taking the chair by the bed. He knows without asking that Isaac don’t think he’s dead anymore, and he doesn’t mention the redness in Isaac’s eyes, or the marks running down his cheeks.

“Long enough to think about things. An hour, maybe. Hour and a half.” He smiles weakly, and the left side of his face droops. It never did before. “Thanks for saving me, Mitch.”

“Don’t mention it. You was lucky Victor got you here in time.” There’s no reason to tell Isaac what Victor is yet, Mitchell decides. He’s had enough mean surprises already.

“He’s the one who found me? I’ll have to thank him later.”

“Yep. Saw it, too. I reckon he’ll be glad to see you’re still kicking.”

“What did he tell you?”

Victor had talked about seeing both gunshots, then watching as Isaac was dumped into a shallow grave. “There was three fellas,” Mitchell says. “One of ‘em had a fancy suit.”

“Fancy-Suit talked like he walked out of a holotape; the other two were Great Khans. They ambushed me south of here.” The tendons on the back of Isaac’s hand stand out as he tightens his grip on his arm. “They must have cut my Pip-Boy off after they knocked me out.”

“Hell,” Mitchell says. He’s not a man who swears often. “Is that what they was after?”

“No, they wanted a package I was delivering. Some metal poker chip.”

“That don’t sound like something worth killing for.”

“It was to them.” For a moment, Isaac is quiet in thought. “Mitch, can brain damage affect your hearing?”

“It sure can. What’s the matter?”

“Your voice is… different.”

“Like a cowboy?”

“I wasn’t going to say phrase it like that.”

“You did, earlier.”

Isaac frowns as much as his sutures will let him. “I don’t…” He trails off. Seems to recall something. “Oh,” he says, a moment later. “Can I use brain damage as an excuse?”

“Just this once. Don’t go digging yourself any deeper.”

Mitchell realizes his mistake a second too late.

“All right,” Isaac says, lightly. “Doctor’s orders.”

After Mitchell changes Isaac’s bandages, he gets them both dinner: a brahmin beef casserole from the generous townsfolk. This kind of food is a far cry from what they were raised on: keeping livestock would’ve been a waste of space and resources, and in a sealed vault, no waste was acceptable. Things are different out here. Mitchell reminds Isaac to pace himself. He does, even though he must feel starving.

While they eat, they play Heel. It’s a kids’ game, a getting-acquainted game. Guess whether the next card drawn will be high or low. Guess right, you get a point; guess wrong, and the other person has to say something about themselves. Correctly calling out a lie nets you two points, but false accusations lose you two. Teaches card-counting and bluffing all at once, two skills as essential as reading or writing.

Might not be anyone left to play it before long.

Used to be the truths and lies were little things: your favorite color, what you had for breakfast. Everyone knew the big things about each other. But here, with Isaac, that’s not how things are. Been five years since they saw each other. Life has gone on. Isaac can bluff about places he’s been, things he’s seen, and Mitchell can do the same. Turns out they’ve both traveled to New Reno and been banned from the casinos for being too good at Blackjack. Isaac says he’s hiked through Death Valley, and Mitchell loses two points for calling it a lie. Isaac loses two for betting that Mitchell has never treated a Super Mutant.

None of Isaac’s mention Mike. That can’t mean anything good.

They’re tied when Mitchell glances at the clock. Damn, he needs to get back to the Fabber ranch. “I got to go check on another patient,” Mitch says. “You gonna be alright here for an hour?”

“I’m standing.” That’s a piece of slang Mitchell hasn’t heard in years. Isaac looks down at himself and adds, “Or I hope I’ll be, soon.”

Mitchell snorts -- even brain damage can’t excuse that joke -- and gets up. As he leaves the clinic, Isaac calls after him, “Thanks again, Mitch. I mean it.”

“Told you not to mention it,” Mitchell calls back, mock-severe. “So much for doctor’s orders.”

It’s been a long time since he heard Isaac laugh.

  
Isaac insists on walking by himself the next day. Mitchell stays close by, reminding him to take it slow, that recoveries take time. But Isaac’s steps are steady and careful as he makes a full circuit of the clinic and then another. He only stumbles twice. Doesn’t fall once.

After lunch, he says he feels good enough to go into town. Wants to thank Victor in person and ask around about the men who shot him. Mitchell takes his old vault suit out from the back of his closet, brushes the dust off the old leather. The clothes Isaac was wearing when he came in were ruined by blood and dirt. He’ll need something to cover up for the locals.

Isaac traces the numbers on the back, his expression halfway between nostalgia and reverence. “I lost mine ages ago,” he says softly.

“Well, you can have it,” Mitchell says. “Not like I wear it anymore.”

“Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me ‘til you see how it fits.”

Isaac puts it on. He don’t bother slipping behind one of the screens. Modesty was never a big concern in a vault built on transparency and with communal showers; it’s nothing Mitchell hasn’t seen before. The suit fits decent enough, but it hangs off him in places. The Mojave don’t have a walk-in diner like the vault did.

Isaac inspects himself. “I can walk around without getting stoned, now?”

“They’re good folks,” Mitchell says sharply. The joke itself needles him less than the implication that he’d laugh at the townsfolk from the outside, like he isn’t one of them. Like his years living here count for nothing.

“You’re right. I’m sorry.” Isaac looks genuine. “Thanks for this, really. You said Victor lives on the south side of town?”

“That’s right. There’s something you should know before you see him.” Better for Isaac to find out here than on his own. “He’s a Securitron, but he’s not one of House’s.”

Isaac stares at him, waiting for the punchline. When it doesn’t come, he says, “You’re joking, aren’t you? _All_ Securitrons are House’s. Every last one was made and designed by RobCo.”

“Victor’s not like those police-faced robots. He’s a harmless fella. Been here longer than most of the folks in town, me included. We’ve never had no trouble from him.”

“I was delivering that package to Vegas.” Isaac looks like a man who picked up a stick, found it was a snake, and is thinking of the best way to stomp on its head. Shaken, bitten, mad as hell. “They never said it was for--”

“Just hold on, now!” Mitchell catches hold of Isaac’s sleeve before he can storm off and do something to get himself killed. “Don’t go rushing in on tilt. Victor’s been in town longer’n I have. He couldn’t’ve been following you. Besides, if that package and Victor was both House’s, he could’ve had Victor stop ‘em right there.”

“Three armed men against one Securitron. Those odds are even at best. And something small like that, fragile… It could be too valuable to risk breaking in a firefight.”

“You’re jumping at ghosts, Yitz,” Mitchell says. He has to be. Mitchell walked forty miles to get clear of House’s influence; it can’t be cropping up here like a bad weed. Can’t have been here this whole time. Just can’t. “You’re recovering from brain surgery. You thought you was _dead_ yesterday. Give your head some time to clear.”

“All right,” Isaac says. “If you’re sure, I’ll leave Victor alone.”

Mitchell lets go of Isaac’s sleeve. “I’m sure,” he says. He hopes it don’t show how much he’s bluffing. “Before I forget-- take this, too. If you’re fixing to hunt those men down, you’re gonna need a map.”

It’s a standard-issue Pip-Boy, still in good condition. Its memory is empty. Mitchell deleted every scrap of personal information off it on a bad night years ago. Got mad at himself for playing Vance’s voice over and over, then took it out on the recording. Couldn’t get none of it back.

If anything of Asher is left on Isaac’s own, no wonder he’s so eager to hunt it down.

“I can’t take that,” Isaac says, shaking his head.

“I don’t need it no more. Think of it as a loan, ‘til you get yours back.” Mitchell would be just as willing to give it away for permanent, but he knows Isaac won’t accept a full replacement. It’s the only way he’ll get the man to take it, other than tying it on Isaac’s arm himself.

Isaac relents. He takes the Pip-Boy, thumbs the dust off the screen, and fastens it on. “I’ll give this back to you soon,” he says. It sounds like a promise to himself more than Mitchell. The next moment, he’s out the door.

The house feels colder already.

In the vault, there was always somebody within ten feet of you. If they weren’t next to you, they were below you or above you. You got to recognizing footsteps so you could put names to the thumps overhead, and you’d known those names all your life, or else you’d known them all of theirs. There were no strangers. There couldn’t be, with three hundred people sharing three levels of a vault.

And now Mitchell lives alone on a hill, the biggest house in town all to himself. His closest neighbor is five hundred feet away. He doesn’t know how folks can grow up like this and stay sane.

He has his ways to fill the emptiness. He turns the radio up as loud as it’ll go -- never Radio New Vegas, not after he heard a commercial for the Vault 21 Hotel -- and tidies up the clinic. He checks the complex set-up of beakers and tubes he’s been using to make homemade stimpaks. It’s a finicky process, and they’re less effective than ones made before the War, but they keep Goodsprings going through droughts of merchant traffic. A drought like the one they’re having right now.

Isaac returns after sunset, with an old rifle slung across his back. Aside from the bandages wrapped around his forehead, he don’t look like a man six days removed from his grave.

“Find any leads?” Mitchell asks.

“Enough to go on,” Isaac says. Means he’ll be heading out soon, and Mitchell tries to be glad for him. “I also found a man hiding at the gas station.”

“Don’t get yourself involved in that trouble.”

“I already have.” Isaac doesn’t look a bit sorry. “Sunny and Trudy will be on our side when the Powder Gangers get here.”

Mitchell looks at him like he’s lost his mind, which he might have, on account of the bullets in his brain. “You got shot twice, and now you wanna put yourself in the middle of a firefight.”

“This is your home. People are trying to take it away. Did you think I’d walk off and let that happen?”

Isaac doesn’t have to say, _We’ve lost one home too many_. The hand on Mitchell’s shoulder says enough.

“You really reckon you can hold your own against the Powder Gangers?”

“Sunny Smiles gave me this--” Isaac turns to show the rifle clearer “--and set up some bottles for me to practice on. I hit nine out of ten from a hundred yards. I haven’t been sitting around since I left Shady, Mitch. I know how to look after myself.”

Not enough to keep from getting buried in a graveyard, Mitchell thinks, but he keeps it to himself. Some things you can’t take back. He tries to wrap his head around the idea of Isaac Levitt, mild-mannered schoolteacher and gunslinging courier. He can’t quite manage it.

Damn it, though, Isaac is right about the Powder Gangers. This fight was gonna happen eventually. “When’s this going down?” Mitchell asks. He won’t be any use in the fight itself, but he can still get ready for the injured that’ll come after.

“Soon. Tomorrow, I bet. They’ll be armed with guns and dynamite. If you have any supplies to spare, it would help us.”

There’s no such thing as spare supplies in a place like this. Mitchell knows exactly how many stimpaks he has on hand; how many feet of suture thread; how many cc of med-x. He had a month’s worth of supplies left when Isaac wound up on his doorstep. Now, he has two weeks at best. Isaac don’t need to know that.

Three stimpaks is all he can give, plus a bag with field supplies: bandages, tourniquets, rubbing alcohol, two doses of med-x, other things that’ll hopefully keep folks from dying before they can reach the clinic.

“Every bit helps,” Isaac says.

They spend the rest of the evening taking turns at dealing blackjack. Two decks, Level Three rules. The rhythm of the game is like an old song. Mitchell didn’t realize how much he missed it ‘til now. His counting is rusty, but Isaac don’t comment, and he’s back on count soon enough.

Even without stakes, it’s too easy to lose track of time like this. Mitchell knows how the first residents of Vault 21 were selected. Gambling’s in their blood as much as anything.

He hopes Isaac knows what he’s doing, betting on Ringo.

  
Mitchell is a light sleeper without the hum of a generator surrounding him, and he hears Isaac leave at the crack of dawn. He makes his own preparations: sets out the equipment he’ll need in the clinic, sterilizes all of it. The fighting hasn’t started, and he’s already waiting for the aftermath.

He has to remind himself to stay away from the windows. He wants to hear what’s going on in town, but a dead doctor won’t do Goodsprings no good.

The first shot rings out around noon. The second comes right on top of it, and the gunfire don’t let up. There’s the sound of dynamite going off. Once, twice, three times. The chips are down. Only thing left to see is where the ball lands.

He gets out his laser pistol, just in case.

The gunfire dies down.

Mitchell reminds himself to breathe.

The door creaks open. As Mitchell reaches for his weapon, Sunny’s voice calls, “It’s all over, Doc! We sent those gangers running. Got somebody you need to take a look at.”

She and Alice are carrying Dale Sumner, whose left thigh is tightly bandaged. “He got shot by a Powder Ganger,” Sunny says. “Your friend Isaac pulled him behind a crate ‘n bandaged him up.” That’s how all the townsfolk refer to Isaac, like it’s part of his name. A title. Doc Mitchell’s Friend Isaac.

Dale is out cold, but he’s breathing, and his pulse is good. Mitchell puts pressure on his femoral artery before he takes a look under the bandage.

He gets to work.

  
There’s one last thing Isaac wants to do, before he leaves town.

They pick up two small stones -- the closest to discs they can find -- on the way to the graveyard. Bodies were cremated in the vault; not here, out in the wasteland, where space is no issue. When Mitchell was traveling, sometimes it felt like empty space was all the wasteland had. He don’t miss those days.

He misses her.

The headstone says Rebecca Weintraub, but nobody called her that since she was twelve, when she got caught trying to swipe her level rep’s blackjack deck. Folks started calling her and her accomplice Bonnie and Clyde. Isaac, a well-read if not yet tactful nine-year-old, had pointed out that the real Bonnie and Clyde were successful thieves. The vault’s would-be thieves were more like this other pair he’d read about: Vikki and Vance. The names stuck.

Isaac’s own grave sits ten feet away. He doesn’t look at it.

Mitchell sets his stone down first. Isaac follows. In the vault, the stones would be poker chips, and the headstone would be a little engraved plaque in a quiet room on Level Three. Vance’s grandmother -- Isaac’s, too -- always said the chip tradition was started by her own grandfather’s mother, as a substitution for stones. Now it’s the other way around.

Isaac says a prayer. Mitchell doesn’t know the words, but he recognizes the language. Like the prayers Vance and her grandmother used to say. Mitchell has tried to clear his memory of everything he saw in Isaac’s bag, but he remembers that there was a pre-War book on religion. Must have been from the vault.

Mitchell says goodbye to Vance. Promises to visit again soon.

The walk back is quiet. Insects buzz in the air like little generators; from a ways off, a brahmin lows. A merciful October breeze rustles the shrubs and yucca plants. Would never be able to tell there was a shootout here yesterday, except for the bloodstains in the dirt by the saloon.

Mitchell climbs the first two steps to his door before he realizes that Isaac isn’t following him up. He turns around. Knows what Isaac is going to say before he says it.

“I need to find those men,” Isaac says, regretful. “They have too much of a head start already.”

He means he can’t stay any longer.

“You’ll find ‘em,” Mitchell says. “Good luck. Hope you turn ‘em up ten-and-ace.”

Isaac pulls him into a hug. “It was good to see you again, Mitch. I didn’t think I would.”

“Only took you getting killed,” Mitchell says. “Come back here if you need patching up.”

“I will.”

“Try not to get shot anymore.”

Isaac laughs, a wet little sound. “I’ll try. No promises.”

Mitchell doesn’t let himself watch the road. He goes inside his empty home, turns the radio up. There’s still two decks worth of cards sitting out on the kitchen table. He sorts them out, shuffles each deck a few times, and puts them away in a dusty little drawer. They'll stay there until Isaac comes back. He still needs to return that Pip-Boy.


End file.
